


Orange Duds

by Attic_Nights



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Dramatic Irony, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Period-Typical Homophobia, Soulmates, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attic_Nights/pseuds/Attic_Nights
Summary: You finally see colour when you meet your soulmate.If this was a movie, Brian would have told Roger by now.





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is mostly finished already, so rest assured this will not remain a WIP. 
> 
> Please be aware that while I have built my own world, many ugly bits of humanity (particularly mid-late 20th century homophobia and all its trappings) remain. If you've come from my [other Queen story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17426222?view_full_work=true) I'll just preface that while I can't resist humour, this story is more on the feels spectrum. 
> 
> Read as alternate historical fiction, I guess. Share with friends, not with the real life folks \o/
> 
> Feel free to leave comments and feedback! They rather expedite my creative brain ;)
> 
> NB Did up the rating, may up it again only if people request a... thing.

**The Beginning**

Brian gets to 21 years old, having a pint with Tim, when his world stops. Within one blink and the next the grey goes. His beer becomes a muddy orange, the table turns worn and rich with what he will later know as _brown,_ and Tim’s shirt is _hideous_ with a clash of several colours. He looks around but is stopped by the most amazing sight. No, stopped is not the word. Grounded, shattered, made whole. Because there by the door is a man.

He’s blond, pretty. No, beautiful. Those big sleepy eyes are wide and even from here he can tell they’re a lovely stormy shade. He realises the man is just as gobsmacked as he is, and a waitress sidles over to him, checking if he’s all right. His soul mate startles and smiles bright like the sun at her, but then that smile wavers a bit.

Brian feels a brief pang as he realises that his soul mate thought that waitress could be… him. His soul mate says something and then she’s leading him over. Towards him.

His heart pounds and pounds until he reckons it’s going to burst from his eyeballs. His soul mate bounces eagerly as he walks, alive and alight like a flame. He comes closer and closer and then he’s in front of him.

“Roger Taylor.”

The name nags at him, familiar, but he’s too excited to do anything about it. “Brian!” he blurts, restraining himself from leaping out of his seat. “Brian May.”

“Tim Staffell.” Brian looks at Tim, surprised. He forgot his friend was sat there. “The drummer, eh? Welcome!”

“That’s me! Hold on, but,” Roger says, and Brian’s stomach does a back flip. “I’ve got to tell the barkeep to ring the Colour Bell. Just seen the future Mrs Taylor, apparently.”

Brian watches in horror as Roger all but flies to the bar. One word keeps ringing in his head. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs.

He becomes aware Tim is speaking only after he hears the bell ring. _Ting. Ting Ting._ Thankfully, whatever Tim says apparently doesn’t need much contribution.

Then Roger returns. He’s just as beautiful as ever, and he's still not recognising Brian as soul mate potential.  As Brian looks at his soul mate a voice, a mean voice starts chanting in his head. _Pansy. Poof. Filthy queer. Faggot._

“… got a kit set upstairs, but take your time.”

“Thanks Tim.”

“Who, erm, who do you think it is?” Brian asks, trying to speak through the lump in his throat.

Roger’s eyes are shining as he watches to see if anyone approaches the bar. “No idea. Maybe that one? Or her?”

Brian’s eyes flick to the bar to see two girls pick up drinks and head away from them. Roger’s face creases in a frown. Tim reaches over and points at a girl who’s eying their table.

 “Maybe that one?”

“Cor, what a beauty,” Roger whispers and makes eye contact with her. Brian simultaneously sweats nervously and melts into the floor.

Tense seconds tick by in which: the girl smiles, a young man comes up to her, slides onto her seat, and she leans into his possessive arm.

An hour passes in which no one comes forward. Eventually Roger leaves his contact details at the bar, and they head upstairs. Brian doesn’t remember much else aside from the beauty and power wrought from tuned drums. This, he thinks, this is the boy that will place stars into his heart.

“He’s a good fit for us?” Tim confirms, as they leave the pub. Brian’s drunk more than usual and Tim has to help guide him off the road.

“He’s perfect.”

“Good,” Tim says, and laughs.

When Tim leaves, Brian is aware of three things. One, he is madly in love. Two, he hasn’t told Roger. Three, Roger is not queer.

The last point crushes him. The first two points confuse him. In frustration, he rips his astronomy textbooks from the shelf and pulls on the light. He opens to a random page – the seahorse nebula – and traces shaking fingers over the warmest and finest tendrils of space.

He thinks of Roger’s hair and wants to know the name of everything. He finds from his dustbin a pamphlet – _The Colour Wheel: Learning names for the soul matched._ He is delighted to know he can see every colour, the difference between every listed shade.

He falls asleep like that, drunk, on his kitchen floor, cushioned by books.


	2. Chapter 2

**London, Spring, 1968 (Mostly, Sometimes)**

When you first see your soul mate, you see colour. Full colour. Every colour.

That’s what Brian hears from his mother, his children's books, his textbooks, the songs he listens to and the movies he watches. The colour mates are something ingrained into his psyche, as is its ugly cousin, the orange dud.

For the past seven years of his life, Brian has largely hated the colour orange. To him, and probably others, it symbolises mistakes and hope. Deceptive expectation.

Once every few years a person will come into view and he’ll see a flash of muddy orange in the sea of grey and black. And he’ll think for a moment – _this is it._ His heart will pound and he’ll look around wildly for a moment. At the trees, the sky, their face, their eyes. But of course, they’re not. No other colours come and there remains just the knowledge that it’s another orange dud. A false alarm. As soon as they leave your awareness, the muddy orange slips back into grey.

 “What were your orange duds like?” asks Brian, the day after meeting Roger. Roger’s sad, understandably so, but he’s still hopeful. Only later, and rather quickly, would he lose that hope.

Brian hands over a mug of tea to his new friend and feels particularly optimistic.

“Gorgeous,” enthuses Roger. “Legs for days usually. Yours?”

Male. He bites his tongue on the hope rising in his heart. “Pretty,” he answers honestly.

“Twiggy pretty or Brigitte Bardot pretty?”

With a sinking feeling, he thinks about women and picks one that doesn’t do nothing for him. “Natalie Wood I guess.”

She wore her emotions plainly and confidently, looked soft but often played women who were quick to anger.

“Nice.”

According to the biology lecture Brian accidentally turned up to in his first week on campus, orange duds, and soul mates in general, were scientifically bizzare. Orange duds, on average, seem to be similar to one’s true soul mate. Similar in appearance, in their interests, perhaps even a genetic code so similar to what could be the best thing one will ever get. Who knows how it all works – the psychics in the East End, maybe?

* * *

 

Tim laughs with Roger when they plan out how they to get a decent psychic in the city. Brian’s in the background, packing up his Red Special. Morning rehearsals suck, but it’s the only free time they have together. Tim’s got a shift tonight, Roger’s got an afternoon class, and Brian’s got a midday lecture. It’s only their second rehearsal together but already there’s an energy to their music. Brian could feel it and by the smiles on Roger and Tim, he reckons they can feel it too.

Roger’s smiles have been determined of late. Determined to fix by pure willpower his most pressing problem. To find his soul mate. Brian helps Roger’s ink-stained hands pack up his kit.

“Once you’re done with your lecture, you mind hanging these up?” Roger hands him a stack of handmade posters and he accepts them without thinking. “Good man.”

The posters crumple a bit in his hand and his throat closes up. He smoothes the posters out with an apologetic hand.

“I think we should try to find the oldest witch. One so old a plasterer couldn’t fill in those wrinkles.”

Roger giggles. “Why not a hot one? Massive jugs. Give me something to look at, at least.”

Tim nods at Brian, who’s stuck to the floor. “Mum always said to find the oldest tree in a forest if you want advice.”

“How well that worked! Froze our collective bollocks off.”

“Yeah but maybe it’s a metaphor. Maybe instead of an old tree, it means old witch?”

“Bugger off.”

“Kaleidoscope,” Brian suddenly says, and the others turn back to him. If he can’t say anything, hopefully someone else can. “My Nan always said to trust psychics with kaleidoscope eyes.”

“What, with specks in their eyes? Or actual glitter?”

Brian shrugs and waves the others off. He goes to his lecture, writes his notes, and eats his lunch. He stares out at the streets, the trees and the buildings and figures Roger would definitely hate him if he didn’t help. So he gets out the posters and Sellotape and sets about putting them up, one every few hundred yards.

He puts them up neatly, at a height lower than his eye level, so everyone could read what each one of them says:

 

> “SEARCHING FOR SOUL MATE
> 
> ‘MET’/MISSED IN CROWDED BAR
> 
> 7:30pm-ish, Thursday 18th
> 
> 19 Y/O. I LIKE MUSIC AND FUN.
> 
> MEET “R” 6:30am THIS SATURDAY
> 
> IN KENSINGTON PUB, RUSSELL GARDENS”

His hands barely shake, but he does hate to consider Roger’s face when some beautiful leggy girl fails to walk into that redbrick building. For a moment, he thinks about how much he hates orange duds, and how they set up expectations.

Brian met his first orange dud when he was eleven. Closing his eyes, he can still remember it as fresh, vivid and awkward as ever.

He’s at a birthday party of a boy in his music class. The main thing eleven-year-old Brian notices after he’s been there for a good ten minutes, is a _coloured_ present. It sits on the table by the door and his heart leaps. He looks at the just-arrived boy, a pretty, young lad around his age, his hair long and pale. He was the only new person there, so he _must be it._

Brian glances around at his friends, the carpet, and the paintings on the wall. Grey, grey, colour... no, orange, grey. When he makes it back to the lad, he sees a blank look in his eye. The lad looks around, says hi to some other boys, and walks away, taking the colour orange with him. Brian takes five minutes to remember how to walk, but as soon as he can, he’s running home. Once there he locks himself in his room, cries, and dreams for the first time of _orange._

He has many questions after that, questions he doesn’t know if he wants answering. Eventually he asks his science teacher, a calm, wizened man mere days off retirement.

“What if you see an orange dud, and they’re… a guy?”

His teacher, Mr Wyatt, considers his question. He asks him if he was sure if the orange dud was a boy.

Brian confirms.

Mr Wyatt tells him that it could be such a similar compatibility that the body recognises it, despite the gender. Or that, like many others in nature, from ducks to lions, from dogs to elephants, he will love another man.

Sometimes Brian looks at girls and wishes colour would leap into his life. When he’s fifteen, a pretty blonde, Janet, sits next to him in English. She’s funny and loud and they date for three whole days. It’s enough to make him sure that he wasn’t a pansy.

* * *

When Brian’s finished with the posters, he meets with Tim do some groceries together. They usually do this once a week to ensure they don’t make any stupid purchases, or so they don’t forget any of the basics. Tim likes lists, Brian likes experimenting, and together they’re starting to form a basic, functioning adult.

“Where’s Roger?”

Tim shakes his head. “Didn’t go well.”

“Oh?” Brian tried to keep his voice level. “Psychic didn’t give any clues?”

“Wasn’t just that. Give me a moment.” He sighs and steers them both to the milk. Brian picks up a carton with a goat on it and turns the milk curiously. Most goats were fairly happy, or was that just family goats?

Tim picks up two pints of cow milk and shoves one into Brian’s bag. His hands are shaking, and Brian realises his friend is frustrated.

“He met an orange dud.”

Brian makes a confused noise.

“I mean, an orange dud came up to him, and bloody hell you should have seen his face. He’s been two weeks now jumping up and looking at every new chick waltzing through that door, and finally someone recognises him.”

“But it was just an orange dud.”

Tim digs his fingers a little too hard into the head of a lettuce. His voice turns high, mimicking a French female accent. “’Hi you look swinging!’ Took ten minutes to realise he was her orange dud, not each other’s soul mate.”

At that moment, he wants to tell Tim who is Roger’s soul mate. He does not. If anyone deserves to hear it first, it’s Roger. “What did the psychic say then?”

Tim just shakes his head. His voice when he speaks is flat. “I left him with his roommate, a bottle of gin, and a loaf of bread. He says he’s not bothered. I gotta admire him. Wish I could be as foolhardy as that. One day he’ll own up to the fact that his soul mate doesn’t want him.”

Brian flinches. “There could be other reasons.”

Tim scoffs.

“And the French girl?”

Tim looks confused. “What about her?”

“Maybe they could be happy?”

* * *

Brian prefers the stars to soul mates. Stars are changing, ancient and vastly unknown. Best of all, when he asks his parents, they tell a three-year old Brian that the stars have no colour. When he grows old enough to read Encyclopaedia Britannica, he is disappointed to learn they are colourless only to the naked eye. There are as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on earth, and every one of them shines colours. So many colours. And at least with his naked eyes, Brian has the calmness of a night sky to convince him he has all he needs.

Orange dud couples are different, mind. They both see in each other not the spectrum, but at least orange in a sea of grey. As some people never meet their soul mate, there are those very happy with an orange dud pairing. Most stay happy with their orange dud partner, both finding happiness in a colour. Sometimes, rarely, both people will experience the orange dud phenomena. Those relationships tend to last.

Brian’s neighbours growing up were a dud couple. When he was younger he used to watch them watch sunsets together. Mrs Singh would point out to Mr Singh different orange clouds, and Mr Singh would draw her attention to the way the grass would alight in orange as the sun slid down. Their happiness lasted, and still, as far as he knew, they remained together.

Most people were not like the Singhs, and orange dud couples last only until they meet the other colours. It may take 60 years, 6 years, or even 6 minutes. There’s an inherent sadness with orange dud couples, Brian thinks, but he does not begrudge them.

Brian’s second orange dud happens when he’s thirteen, nearly fourteen. Before Janet, before he looked twice at any other girl, he falls in love. It’s a boy again, a beautiful, striking boy with high cheekbones and soft round eyes. He's not traditionally handsome, with a rugged jaw, but he is so _pretty._ Brian stares at the new boy in his class, at his _orange_ shirt, and it’s just as good as the first time. His heart pounds and he looks around everywhere.

But it’s just as bad as the first time, too. The teacher’s dress is grey, his pen ink is black, and his hands are white. Reality crashes him from the hot, dizzying heights of the sun to the cold, crushing depths of the Mariana Trench and he looks at the new boy’s face. Disappointment drips down a pretty face and just like that, he knows the boy sees it too. Orange. An orange dud couple.

Brian passes him a note and _hopes._

The boy’s name is Franklin. Franklin comes up to him at lunch and asks to see him in private. Brian picks up his books and lunch, and follows him. They get to an empty hallway when Franklin asks where they should go. Brian leads him to the bike shed, his heart in his chest.

Franklin closes the old shed door behind them and moves in close. Brian forgets how to breathe. All he can feel is a kind of electric thrum coursing throughout his body.

Suddenly his ears are ringing and his face feels like it's on fire. His hands come up to his nose and he feels wetness there. Another punch gets him on his jaw and he’s suddenly aware that Franklin’s speaking, that Franklin’s punching him in his face, and calling him a filthy queer. Brian doesn’t respond, only slides to the ground.Franklin kicks his sides with a solid boot and stomps on his hands. Pansy.  He opens a swollen eye to see his sandwich scattered in the dirt and his books ruined in an oil puddle. Poof. He feels his ribs crack. _Faggot_.

When he sees a female orange dud at age 19, he almost weeps in relief. He tries to date her, gets as far as a movie and a lunch, before she dumps him over pudding. I’m a man, she sighs, and apologises for leading him on.

* * *

Saturday morning comes far too quickly for Brian’s tastes. He goes through his preparations logically. The night before he’d set his alarm for 5:30am, giving him plenty of time to get ready. He’d gone to bed at a sensible 10pm and written out several speeches to give to Roger. He finds these speeches, reads them in the _very weak_ morning light, and destroys them on the gas burner as he makes tea.

Getting ready, he chooses matched socks, a collared shirt with a sensible paisley pattern, and matches his brown shoes to a brown belt. He attempts to tame his hair, succeeding in only getting it wildly wavy. Groovy. Whatever. He sighs and feels his heart race. Logic.

Logically, this is a perfect plan. For all Roger claims to be an idiot, and for all the times he misreads bus timetables, he is in fact quite smart. The posters are a good idea. Logically, no time waster will bother to get up for 6:30am on a _Saturday morning._ No rubbernecker or curious gossiper will trudge out to the Kensington Pub, which for most people is closed this time of morning. For them, it’s open, because they agreed to play for free Saturday night. If anyone is awake now, surely they have more important things to do than to watch some kid either be stood up or finally meet his soul mate. The only one who would bother getting up at 6:30am on a Saturday would, logically, be Roger's soul mate.

His phone rings and he is quick to answer it. Tim explains that he’ll be a little late, having accidentally only just woken up. Brian rolls his eyes fondly.

“I’ll meet you there.”

The only snag in the plan was that Roger knew Brian would be there anyway. And Tim, but Tim wasn’t Roger’s soul mate.

Roger’s face when Brian opens the pub door is hopeful and beautiful. He blinks once, twice, then frowns as he realises it’s only Brian. Brian watches as his mate’s shoulders slump.

Tim’s late, Brian reminds himself. It’s the perfect time.

“Hey Roger.”

Roger hums. His eyes switch between the front door and the back door.

“Brian!” Brian turns and sees the owner appear from the office behind the bar. “Got the request list for tonight. I’ll just leave it here, aye, and let you get back to… this. Good luck Roger.”

Roger hums. The owner disappears. Minutes tick by on the old grandfather clock: 6:10am, 6:20am, 6:30am. Finally Brian feels like he can _say it._

“Roger…”

Roger shushes him, looking increasingly agitated. Brian slowly sits down next to his friend, his new friend, his soul mate. How quickly Roger Taylor has become his life!

“I just want to say—”

“I don’t want your pity.”

Brian’s mouth clicks shut in surprise. He tries again. “Roger, no—”

Roger turns to him. Stares right at him. Right through him. He’s red faced and he has unshed tears in his eyes. “No.” His voice wavers, and it is a helpless, bitter thing.

Brian reaches out to Roger with his hand and –

“Sorry I’m late.”

Roger’s face does a quick contortion of hope and despair. It's Tim, just Tim. Not a soul mate. Brian sees tears finally fall and in the next moment Roger’s gone. He pushes out of his chair and almost sprints out of the pub through the back door.

Brian goes to run after him but Tim’s quicker. “He’ll want one of us to stay,” Tim explains, slamming his hip into a table corner as he attempts to weave through the room. Brian pauses, brain swimming. “In case. You know. They show!”

He sits there, head in his hands, for three hours, waiting for an imaginary soul mate to show up. A soul mate who wasn’t him. A soul mate Roger deserves.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On reflection, since there was a little confusion pointed out, I've made the events slightly more linear. The opening to this chapter is now [Chapter 1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604747/chapters/44108368) so if you're reading this straight from chapter 2, go back and read the First Meeting scene. The end of this chapter would be familiar, as it was chapter one. Chapter 2 has not been changed.
> 
> If you've already read Brian's and Roger's meeting already, you're fine, keep going. This message is not for you. Shh. Everything's going to be all right.

**London, Spring, 1968**

After the failure of the Saturday meeting, Roger goes through several stages. Brian isn’t there for all of them, and neither is Tim. Freddie, Roger’s flatmate, picks up whenever he can, and Brian is grateful. He likes Freddie, who sings for a band called Ibex, has a wicked sense of humour, and makes Brian feel included. He jokes about arses and clothes but never about tits and women. Until he met Freddie, he hadn’t realised how much of a fake he felt in those sorts of conversations.

Between him, Tim and Freddie, they make sure Roger isn’t alone.

The first stage Roger goes through happens while Brian is still ‘waiting’ for a soul mate. Tim tells him about it that afternoon, over a jam session in his flat. They have to rehearse for tonight at the Kensington, and Tim’s adamant they shouldn’t cancel the gig. Tim strums the bassline to Jailhouse Rock with a sort of frenetic energy.

“He’s gone put an ad in the paper. Twenty quid reward for information.”

“He can’t afford twenty quid.”

“Better than before – before that he was talking about how he was wearing the wrong thing in the pub.”

Brian thinks back to Roger’s clothes. Honestly, he can’t really remember them, only the man in them. “What about them?”

“Thought his soul mate thought him another girl, or something.”

“What did you say?”

Tim puts down his bass and scrubs a hand over his forehead. “Usual sort. To go boil his head if he thought that, etcetera. That he’s a fine chap and there’s probably just been a mistake. That there are other reasons why someone wouldn’t come.”

“Why do you think his soul mate didn’t reach out, back then, in the pub?”

“Could have thought Rog was just an orange dud. Or maybe she was blind. Or deaf not to hear the bell. Or daft. Or over 100 years old. Who the hell knows.”

“What if it wasn’t a girl?”

"Wasn't a girl? What - oh!"

Tim starts laughing. He stops when he reads Brian’s face. “Fine, sure, possible but Roger’s _Roger_. He isn’t a queer. He’s never had a male orange dud, for one.”

Brian breathes in but Tim interrupts him. “Roger, yeah, has two criteria before he notices someone. People don’t exist unless they play music or have tits.”

“I’m queer.”

The flat is silent. He can hear the tap dripping in the kitchen, the flutter of pigeon wings outside, and car horns blaring. Tim’s face, when he looks, is shocked. He clears his throat.

“Yeah but you’re you, Bri. It makes sense. Now I think about it. You okay?”

“No,” Brian answers honestly. “But that felt good, I think. You still want to be in a band together?”

“We’ve been mates since school. Of course. So long,” Tim says, and winks, “as you don’t try to kiss me you poof.”

Brian rolls his eyes and controls his shaking fingers by playing the opening lines of Johnny Be Good. “You wish.”

They play a few more songs, focussing on any unusual harmonies and tricky fingering. This sort of thing is easier with a drummer, someone to keep time, and with every mistimed entry Brian thinks more and more about Roger.

Eventually Tim grabs his case and starts to pack up. He pauses though. “Brian, you’re a queer, yeah?” At Brian’s nod, Tim exhales slowly. “Don’t tell anyone?”

Brian nods again, quicker.

“I don’t think I like women either. But I don’t like men.”

Brian frowned. “What about your orange duds?”

“Never had one.” Tim looks strangely vulnerable, and before Brian can think, he’s hugging his friend tight.

“Who needs one, eh?”

Tim laughs sadly. “Anyway,” he says, giving one final squeeze before breaking the hug. “You okay to pick up Roger?”

“We’ll see you there,” Brian promises.

Brian walks to Roger’s, guitar in one hand and a brown-bagged bottle of brandy in the other. He’s not sure who left the full brandy at his, but it’s been there for months and no one’s claimed it yet. He’s also not sure if he’ll drink it for courage, or Freddie will for his nerves after dealing with Roger, or Roger, for dealing with all the shit.

Roger’s roommate answers the door and nearly snatches the brandy from his hands.

“Brian darling, I could kiss you. He’s in his room; he’s all yours.”

“Hey Freddie,” Brian greets, and takes in the apartment. It’s usually messy, but this looks destroyed. “You get broken into?”

Freddie shakes his head and delicately picks through a pile of broken glass. He picks up a wine glass, sans stem. “Perfect! No, that’s all blondie’s doing.”

“Oh.”

“Brian!” Freddie suddenly hisses, and pulls Brian closer. “Tell him he’s gorgeous.”

Brian made a confused noise.

“Maybe he’ll believe it, coming from you. Now, excuse me while I cancel those strippers he ordered.”

"Strippers?"

"Tits, not paint strippers." Freddie sighs.  "Although I doubt we can afford either."

With Freddie shooing him down the hall, a bewildered and lost Brian knocks on Roger’s closed door. He’s met with silence.

“It’s me, Brian.”

“Go away.”

Brian sighs and rests his forehead on the door. “I can’t.”

“Bugger off.”

“Roger—”

“GET THE FUCK AWAY.”

Wincing, Brian moves closer to the floor. “You’re stronger than this, Roger.” When Roger doesn’t say anything, he continues. “You’re stronger than them. They’re a coward, and above all they’re not what you deserve. I’m not going to offer excuses for why they did what they did to you. They’re the worst, most vile, awful, undeserving human for putting you through this.

“But you. You’re the strongest, most beautiful person I know. That’s why I know you can do better than this. Than them. And Rog, there are better ways to deal with this than dealing with this alone.”

He hears a click and the door moves out of its latch.

“Get the fuck in here then, you arse.”

Roger’s on the floor, knees to his chest and his hair a mess. His face is a blotchy mix of red and white and he stares at the floor. “I broke my sticks,” Roger whines forlornly.

Brian spies them picks them up from the floor, split in four as they are. “Well done.” Roger snorts. “Got spares?”

Roger nods and waves a hand towards his bed. Brian looks under a pack of ciggies, an empty gin bottle, a half-eaten loaf of bread, and eventually finds them under a magazine that showed more tits than he ever thought was possible to show. He hands them to Roger, who flicks the clasp of his guitar case.

“Play something.”

“Eat something.”

Roger shakes his head. Brian tosses him the bread and stares at him, eyebrows raised, until Roger sighs and tears off a chunk.

“Any requests?” he asks, lifting the red special out.

“Norwegian Wood.”

He fumbles a bit at the key, trying to get the right chords, before finding it. As he plays the opening verse Roger moves in close, puts his head on Brian’s shoulder, and closes his eyes.

 

**London, July, 1970.**

“Humpy Bong?” asks Brian.

“Humpy Bong,” confirms Tim, somewhat earnestly. “They're going places! They're gonna be big!”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Roger turning red. “‘Humpy Bong?’ Are you joking?”

Brian shakes his head. He, unlike Roger who went straight to anger, is still stuck in the slippery cold feeling of denial. “Don’t do it, Tim.”

“I’m sorry guys, but we’re not going anywhere with this. With you two both – you gotta work it out, I’m sick of being in the middle of it.”

“What do you mean?” bites Roger. Brian turns white. Tim’s eyes flick over to him and coughs.

“I mean, college gigs? Pubs?” Tim shakes his head, suddenly seeming tired. He lofts his bass and begins turning away. “Gotta give it a go.”

Brian feels torn between decking Tim and running after him. Frozen, he shares a look with Roger. Roger looks back at him; his pink mouth is agape and somehow Brian is stuck there, in the frozen, unmoving part of wanting to save his band. They share a look and in that moment there is only Roger and him, both lost, angry and upset.

“It’s what he wants?” Brian suggests, somewhat bitterly.

“Screw that,” rasps Roger. “Beer?”

“Yes please.”

They sit in silence on the back of their van, watching men stumble from the pub to the car park, keys and/or women in their hands. Brian watches this and not Roger’s gentle kisses on the lip of his beer bottle. He feels the cool air of a clear London night against his cheek and not the warm softness of Roger against his side.

Roger starts laughing. It's manic, quick, and peters off into a sigh. “I don’t know what it is about this band. Bad luck from the beginning.”

"You really want to talk about that?"

"Better that than Tim. I'm two seconds off hating him for life."

"How about the weather?"

"How about you piss off?"

"How about my clothes?" Brian was over the moon when he found this shirt. Even in the night, its purple and green swirls were enough to induce an epileptic seizure, but he wears it under the guise of it being reminiscent of whirlpool galaxies. Roger hates it, but for Brian, the shirt is safety.

Unfortunately Roger does not laugh, roll his eyes or even mock-gag. His fists are balled up around his bottle and his eyes are downcast, thick eyelashes wavering.

Brian hates when Roger’s like this. For the past two years, it's usually been Tim who deals with Roger when he’s like this. Listens, picks him up and make him smile again while Brian busies himself with the very important task of breaking apart. Tim is gone now.

With a sigh, Brian puts a hand on Roger's shoulder, ignoring the shock that runs through him as they touch. “They’ll…" he says, hesitating, "you’ll find them again one day.”

Roger snorts. “Colours. Colours. It’s golden, you know,” he says swirling his beer. “In an ugly brown bottle. Wish I could turn colours the bloody hell off.”

Brian tries to inject levity, but he's still bitter and it spoils his tone. “So you wouldn’t have to care about what I wear? I rather like this shirt, incidentally. It's grey with a pattern of grey.”

“So I’d know if I saw them again.” At Roger’s words, Brian swallows painfully. This is exactly why he doesn’t like Roger like this. “Grey. Bam, colour. Got you this time you bitch. I just wish I hadn't spent so much time...”

Brian keeps quiet to listen to his friend. He wills his heart to stay together, just this once. Eventually Roger lights a ciggy, the tip glowing orange.

“Maybe he was right. We were a bit shit tonight.”

Outwardly, Brian winces. Inwardly, he sighs in relief. “There’s room for improvement, but…”

“Ere. Do you know what he meant about ‘us’?”

“No,” lies Brian.

Roger looks at him intently, but Brian trains his eyes on the pub door. Eventually Roger looks away. As he does he blows smoke from his ciggy. Brian wonders if he did that to be kind, because he knew Brian didn’t like cigarette smoke, or because he knew Brian was lying and didn’t want Brian to see his face.

“Whatever. Wanker’s right. About us. Smile. I’ve got better things to do on a Saturday night. I could give you their names.”

Brian ignores the lascivious wink Roger sends him, and stamps down on the coil of jealousy in his gut. “No, stay. We can do this. Promise me.”

He turns to Roger, earnest and letting some of that longing bleed into his expression. Roger stares at him incredulously, stubs out his ciggy, and says,

“Yeah, all right.”

Brian looks to the stars, wishes, and puts his hope in their future.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers, I thank you all for your patience. 
> 
> I apologise for being on unexplained hiatus for so long. Life happened in a strange way, some effects of which included two and a half deaths, quitting my job, and an uncertain future. I’m starting to pick up a bit, but it’s been a confronting road. I’ve definitely been trodden on in the process, oops. But the road I walked before was toxic in many ways for my career. And I couldn’t have done so well without my life partner by my side.
> 
> Orange Duds has grown a bit. Like a stubborn house plant that shoots up despite being neglected. The time in between this chapter and the last meant that I sprouted some new ideas to expand the story. The Original Five Planned Chapters may actually be a bit longer. Maybe Six Chapters now? We’ll see. 
> 
> Most importantly, we're back on schedule. 
> 
> My biggest concern is that my style has changed a bit. So, part way through this chapter, we change to Roger’s perspective. Have fun, and let me know if it's working!

The next Saturday is the first Saturday night in a while that they’ve had to themselves. Without a bass player, there’s no gig to play and no band practice to attend. There’s not even a looming Monday assessment deadline over which to fret. Roger meets up with him in the line for a Soho club, bouncing in beside him with a smile. The women in the queue behind Brian don’t appear to mind Roger’s line-cutting. No, their whispers are soft with smiles rather than sharp with teeth.

For now, all Brian can think about is the way Roger’s smiling. Like dawn, like a supernova, and unlike every cliche love song. Bright, wide, and painfully everything. The thing about loving Roger is not that he can’t, or that he shouldn’t, but that he can’t help it, and has decided he shouldn’t try. To stop would be like trying to stop the Earth turning. He can’t, nor should he try.

“Apparently Eric Clapton was in here last night,” Roger says, instead of saying “Hi.”

Brian smiles back good-naturedly. “Who?”

Roger rolls his eyes and starts fixing Brian’s outfit. He straightens a collar and twirls a curl, all while carrying on the conversation. “The guitarist.”

“Oh,” says Brian. The name rings a bell, but it is not as captivating as the movement of Roger’s hands over his body. He straightens when Roger pulls back briefly to scowl. “Right! The Yardbirds, yeah?”

Roger barks out a laugh and the line for the club moves forward a few paces. “I hope you meant to say Cream. The Yardbirds. Shall I get you home before 10 too, pop?”

Brian rolls his eyes. “You know I meant that. What did you think of his solo in _While My Guitar_ …” Brian stops because Roger’s suddenly very close. His calloused fingers are at his chest, warm and deft. He’s unbuttoning the top two… three… four buttons on his shirt. Surely Roger can feel his heart pounding through his shirt?

Roger pulls back with a friendly clap on the arm. And oh, Roger’s speaking: “…Freddie says his sister’s friend’s sister saw him.”

Brian swallows and tries to breathe normally. “I’d prefer… Hendrix.”

“Of course you would. How do I look?”

Brian pulls back. The air clears his head a bit and he puts on a critical air. Roger’s boots are high, above his knees, and he wonders for a moment how they stay up. They suit him, though, in a fashionable way, and he supposes that’s all Roger would care about. His trousers are hip-hugging and black; nothing unusual there, but they clearly frame his...

His belt is normal, his shirt is a midnight satin, and his long coat is furry. His ever-longer hair brushes smiling cheeks and shoulders, and it looks freshly washed and styled. He wonders if the hair is as soft as it looks, free from hairspray and gel. He wonders— no.

“All right,” he says. “A bit bohemian?”

“You’re such a square,” Roger complains, but there’s the red blush on his cheek that he only gets when he’s happy.

“But this—“ he points at a strange posy which had in its centre a fat felt bumblebee.

“Brooch.”

“Brooch, is a little bit, uh, naff.”  

Roger leans forward for him to take it off and his fingers barely shake. He puts it in his coat pocket and smiles to himself.

They buy a few rounds in the club, and watch the dancing bodies on the floor for a while. They talk about Freddie and how they’ll find a new bass player. Roger’s trusting him, more so than he trusts himself, to be able to snare a decent one.

Too soon a group of girls flock them – or rather, flock Roger – and it takes him an hour to work out how to politely extricate himself from a handsome woman’s clutches. She’s a better dancer than he is, and doesn’t seem to mind his lack of choreography, but she’s getting bolder, despite his frequent glares.

He focuses on Roger drifting further and further from him on the dance floor. He’s got some beautiful curvy blonde girl in his arms. Roger’s not going home alone tonight, he knows, and just as he thinks that he feels his dance partner boldly squeeze his arse.

A bit cross, he pulls her hair away from her ears and says as calmly as he can, “Nice _red_ hair you have. Hope you’ll see it one day.”

Predictably, she lets go with a gasp and he strides through the dance floor.

“I'm off," he yells to Roger over the music.

Roger winks at him before turning back to his… girl.

Brian storms away, jealous and angry with himself, and tries to focus on anything that is not his waves of self-loathing. He finds some in the weather, the air as he makes it outside.

He decides he loves the contrast between a hot, nearly steaming club and the cool London night. He looks up and forces himself to breathe slowly at the moon that hangs above him. The moon is a waxing crescent, nice and distant, cool and white against the black of the sky. There are stars under there, under that blackness, and for once, he is grateful he can't see them over the light pollution. He’s become… used to not seeing the stars each night. He sees them in his books and papers. And that’s okay. The sky here is black and white, clear and simple.

He’s taken from his reverie a few yards from the club entrance by a voice. He turns, and the voice comes again. It almost sounds familiar and he realises with an icy jolt that the name they were calling wasn’t quite his, but the name belongs to him all the same.

He turns back and picks up his pace. He hears what sounds like a few people running, and he resists the urge to run, and resists the urge to flinch when a hand deftly spins him around.

“Oh, hello,” he says, pretending to just notice them. “I—”

“Going to get some nosh, Brain?”

One of them sniggered and circled around to block his original path. Another places a hand on his shoulder. Brian tenses and forcibly shrugs it off. He stares at the man, who is pug-faced and sneering. Gary, he remembers.

“Yeah,”  another crows. Davy, he thinks. He shudders when he feels rather than sees a finger drag down his open collar. “Brain’s going to go and see a man about a dog.”

A third joins in: “Or… go a blow a fag. I don’t mean cigarettes!” and they all burst out in raucous laughter.

Brian looks at each of their faces, red and clearly drunk. He thinks about his odds of out running them, and instantly his brain supplies him with images of them barreling around Hamtpon's football field each season. He can’t see Franklin, their leader, and he’s not sure if that’s good or bad. He settles for a stern face, set shoulders, and tries sliding out of what is becoming a tight huddle.

“Yeah yeah,” he grits. “Go chase some skirts.”

Somewhat predictably, he’s stopped. While he’s taller than most of them, what they lack in height they make up with brawn.  He’s grabbed by two (Eddie? Ginger?), each taking his arm in a facsimile of fraternity.

“Hey man, we’re just decking you.”

Instantly, he has a flashback to the last time he was cornered by the gang, back in sixth form, and begins to seriously struggle. They laugh, as if it were all a big joke, and take turns to pull him effortlessly westward.

* * *

There are three things Roger finds difficult in seeing a colour-soaked world.

The first is the names of colours. He sometimes gets blue and green switched in his head, especially when the shades border each other. There are whole forests of colour names out there, like periwinkle, vermillion and puce, and they grow and grow while he’s sat, thumb up his arse, sorting the basics on his own.

The second is dating. Half the time he lets slip a colour (“Where’s your friend, the brunet?” or, “Have you seen my friend? No, wearing the green shirt.”) – which, considering he’s only had two years out of twenty seeing the bastards, his mouth has gone uncomfortably comfortable in using them in conversation.

Dating is a problem because within it, are a few more problems. Like Russian nesting dolls.  In letting girls know he can see colours, some immediately think he’s a cheater. Others do worse, and think he’s a widow. Either way, the conversation usually runs deeper than he’ll like for a quick shag. He’s getting better at exuding the “free love” vibe, and projecting himself as a poster boy for rebellion. To subscribe to the colour mate theory is to deprive oneself of free will. Without free will, we're living in a prison and the only way to escape is to love based not on colour but on attraction. And all that rot. Some girls dig that, thankfully.

If half the time he gets unlucky lets slip a colour, the other half... well. 

There are many exciting people in the world and there's few things he loves more than people.

Tonight is one such example. He almost can’t believe his luck. There were times that he dreamed of this… but there was a certain gap between dreams and reality. Shaking his head a bit, he squeezes the waist of the blonde, and squeezes the waist of the redhead. Still real. How do the French call it?

He asks them, and they giggle out a unified, “Menage a trois.”

“Fantastic,” he replies, and they beam at him.

They stumble out of the club, giggling. His neck stings in the cool night air, a bit tender from the necking one of them gave him. Redhead, who was Brian’s, but has clearly moved on, slips her hand a bit low and he grins. His grin turns to a grimace as Blonde waves over a taxicab (he was a bit skint, after all).

Redhead stumbles a bit and that’s when he sees it. His bumblebee brooch. The one Freddie made for a bit of fun, and the one Brian took from him earlier. He stares at it a bit, wondering in his semi-wankered state what it was that Brian had against it. Naff? One of the girls calls to him and he waves absently at her, wondering now why he was getting icy pinpricks crawling up the length of his spine. Dread creeps more fully over him as he wonders how it got out of Brian’s pocket. After all, he'd danced all around the club and without it falling out.

He frowns and picks it up. Has someone stepped on it? The bee’s folded in on itself and it won’t go back to normal.

This leads him to the third thing he finds difficult in a colour-soaked world. It’s the biggest thing, the smallest thing, the most constant thing. He’s got no one to share his world with, and as a result, his best friends are all he’s got.

“Ere,” he says, turning to the bouncer. The Bouncer stares at him like a taxidermied bear stares at a school group in a museum. “Did you see a gangly fella, with hair… uh, curly dark hair? Yeah, 'bout half an hour ago?”

The Bouncer stares at him more directly and he tries not to shrink. The girls call for him again inside a purring black cab. Finally The Bouncer speaks.

“Spots.” he says cryptically. Roger stares for a few moments before the light bulb goes off.

“Yes! He was wearing spots. And flared sleeves.” Roger supplements his description by tugging on his own sleeves. He misses and shakes his head. He holds up the bumblebee brooch. “He dropped this.”

The Bouncer stares and time practically drags past. Eventually he looks at the brooch. Then keeps looking at it. Then looks back at Roger. During this time, his stoic expression does not change. Once again, Roger is reminded of a stuffed bear.

“Friends.”

“Yes, we’re friends,” Roger agrees, raising his brows, and wonders a bit what planet the man came from.

“Went with friends.” The Bouncer points. Roger follows his finger and feels dread sucker punch him.

Calmly, Roger thanks The Bouncer. He turns, hears himself make up some excuse for the girls, hands over a few shillings to help them get home, and _runs._

He can’t feel himself running, not the usual rasp of air in his throat nor the usual stitch in his side. He can only hear the pounding of his head and the slap of his boots on the road. He’s not even sure why he feels panic, only that he does, and he trusts that panic to drive him forward. He weaves through narrow streets and sprints down main roads when he reaches Soho Square Gardens and gets a feeling like someone’s dumped cold water down his back. So he stops.

“Brian!” he calls. He hears a flutter of wings – bats probably, and strides forward a few paces. He spins around. “BRIAN!”

In the daytime, the park is open, flat, and flanked by respectable red brick buildings. At night, he can barely see anything twenty feet from the streetlights that flanked the greenery. Little window squares of light flick on and off around him – surely, if something happened, people would have heard?

He walks further in, tripping over a park bench as he does so, and starts to feel foolish. Then he hears it, soft as an oak leaf on the wind. His name. He moves quickly until he reaches an old, big tree. His friend is sprawled unmoving on the ground, back propped against the giant tree trunk. Roger crouches and sees red.

He does not see literal red; there was a smear of what looked like blood under Brian’s nose, but that had dried grey in the darkness. He knows it would be red, red red red.

He takes a moment, switching into his half-remembered lectures to assess the damage. Brian's conscious and leans into his touch, his skin clammy and cold.

Skull: not wet, not bleeding. Nose: bruised, wet with blood, not broken. Eyes: dark and already starting to swell. He continues running his fingers softly over each part, listening to any hitching breaths and feeling any damage. Cheeks: soft. Lips: dry, split, warm. Chest: possible broken rib. Hands: calloused, cold and wet. He comes back to himself holding Brian’s hands in the middle of Soho Square. He does not let go. He smiles at Brian.

“This is a fine place to kip,” he says.

Brian smiles back – painfully, it looks like.

He pulls away to stand, only to have Brian grope frantically for him.

"It's fine, I'm staying with you."

Brian coughs a terrible cough and shies away. "You needn't."

They get to a cab, who takes them to the nearest open medical centre. Roger sends a quick prayer thanking the NHS as he sits with Brian in the uncomfortable waiting room, and again when they shuffle out. Despite being in this situation in the past with his mum after one of dad's turns, walking out of a hospital with no monetary exchange always feels to Roger like he’s walked out of a store without paying for something.

The sky is turning purple on the horizon, the spring sun not far away. Tall buildings stand black against the growing dawn like strange tombstones. In the distance, he can see St Pauls dome arch like a cat’s back high above squat square structures. Around him, he can hear pigeons cooing over a new day. The wind blows brisk, winter-brisk and he shivers. He looks down. He's forgotten to wash his hands and can see he has blood flaking his skin. He turns to Brian, who looks clean, but scuffed.

“You sure you wouldn’t recognise them? I promise I won’t bash their heads in, much.”

Brian merely sighs. “Just leave it, Rog.”

Roger shrugs, helps Brian home, and turns to leave. He stops when he feels Brian’s hand on his wrist.

“Shall I stay?” he asks Brian.

“There’s no need,” Brian replies, but lets him in anyway.

 

Brian’s place is small and recently built. Roger feels strange walking inside, realising for the first time he’s never seen it. Where Brian sleeps, lives and cooks. Brian’s seen his and Freddie’s flat, even slept on the couch once. He’s cooked eggs in his kitchen, helped unclog a drain in the bathroom, and even has aided Freddie in choosing posters for his walls. Brian in Roger's flat is warm and obliging, quiet but discerning. Brian here is... grey.

He considers all of this as he looks over at the sparse room. Because that is what this flat is… a room. The only colour in it is a single orange flower sagging in a mug on the windowsill. He looks at the worn carpet, the desk drowning under notebooks and loose-paper essay drafts. There's a few photographs on the windowsill, of him and Brian, one of him, Tim and Brian, and one of what is probably Brian's parents. There’s a bookshelf heaving under books on one side, and there’s something missing.

A fridge, he realises, but then thinks no, there’s something else. No couch? Oh—

“Where’s your bed?” he asks.

Brian shuffles forward like an old man towards a grey cabinet. Roger helps him move the desk to a corner, and then Brian holds his hands out in a “wait” signal, which Roger follows by crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.  Brian pulls on the topmost handle of the cabinet and Roger can only watch slack jawed as a bed pops out.

“And the bathroom is shared, down the hall,” Brian says.

Roger realises he’s been staring at the bed too long. He giggles to himself. “This belongs to Laurel and Hardy, Bri. If you ever needed to trap a burglar… you could do it. Just—” he claps “—and he’s gone!”

“I can sleep on the floor,” says Brian. “If you needed to sleep, that is.”

Roger glances at Brian, who is swaying slightly. His usual rigidness has slipped from his shoulders, leaving him looking soft and almost pliable. Painkillers, Roger surmises.

“Don’t be silly,” he scolds. “I can sleep on the floor. Or, if you’re okay with it, I’ll share with you. What’s this, a double?”

Brian looks confused. His eyes flick back and forth a bit, as if he’s trying to read Roger’s face. “I’m okay with it. Sharing… my bed with you.”

Roger helps Brian settle for the night – or morning, as it is now. Brian moves slower and slower the more time passes. Roger waggles his eyebrows as Brian stumbles into pyjamas, to which Brian only half-rolls his eyes. When he takes off his boots and slacks, he feels strangely self-conscious. He waits for a moment in the flat, curtains doing bugger all to keep the dawn out, standing there in his shirt and pants, the back of his neck prickling. He slips into the bed and faces Brian, who’s been staring at him, pupils blown.

“You have legs,” Brian says slowly, hushed like the words were a secret.

“You must be on some good drugs man,” he whispers, only slightly nervously.

Brian’s eyes blink slowly, and when he speaks again his words are slurred and heavy. “Do I have legs?”

“The leggiest,” Roger confirms.

“Good,” replies Brian. “You look like them. Hmm, pretty.”

Roger feels his heart start to pound and his throat goes tight. He doesn’t know why, but he feels it all the same. “Who?” he asks, curiosity taking over the slight of being called… _pretty_.

Brian makes a shushing noise. Then stiffens beside him. “Roger?” he says in an almost normal voice.

“Yes?”

“Oh god.”

“No, just Roger.”

They’re quiet for a bit. Roger’s the first to giggle and Brian joins him a second after, albeit a bit breathlessly.

“Why are you staying?” asks Brian, voice thick and slow.

Roger slides his hand over Brian’s and runs his fingers over the bandages. “Because I need to, Brian,” he replies, and goes to sleep.

* * *

The first colour Roger noticed, after orange, was _brown_. The pub was swimming in brown. Brown were the wooden tables, the leather shoes, the ales, and well-worn floorboards. He dreams of brown now, of brown trees hiding Brian, moving into his path, their leaves brown as death and the sky brown as dirt. The oldest of the trees stands tall and harsh in front of him and echoes to him the words of the east-side witches:

_Stop looking._

* * *

Later that day, Roger wakes to icy air. Brian’s still dead to the world beside him, his breathing slow and thick. In the darkness of the room he can almost imagine the world is grey again. He smiles as he leaves the warm bed.

He learns it's around midday, and when he peeks through the curtains he can see the clouds have bloomed thick and black. Even with his shitty eyesight he can spot sheets of sleet slicing down onto the tar road below. Some snow flicks by and he can guess it's blowing from the continent, that cold easterly wind picking up across the channel and hurling it through their properly thick little homes. Or tiny one-room flats, as it were. He spends a few moments listening to the wind squeezing into Brian’s walls and he shivers.

He boils the kettle and keeps his hands wrapped around the mug for warmth. He makes a second cuppa for Brian. He uses the remaining hot water to fills a hot water bottle and he hugs it against his chest with a satisfied groan.

Brian’s still asleep. He’s bundled up in blankets and the only bit of him visible is his poufy hair. Roger places the teas on the floor next to the bed. Carefully, so as not to sit on Brian, he lowers down and shakes his friend’s shoulder.

“Hey…”

Brian grunts and disappears completely below the covers. Roger shakes him again and Brian rouses, poking up from underneath a satin-rimmed orange woollen blanket. Brian looks awful. His eyes are bloodshot, his nose has swollen and his lip must have split again during the night. Two dark bruises have blossomed under his eyes. Roger is struck again by the urge to find whoever did this, break their hands, and shove their own cocks up their arses.

He passes Brian the hot water bottle, which Brian shoves immediately to his toes and lets out a sigh.

“I couldn’t work out your radiator.”

Brian sits up unsteadily. “I don’t have one?” His voice comes out like the air's been punched from his chest.

Roger frowns slightly, wondering what, if not a radiator, it was he poked around with earlier. “How do you keep warm?”

To his surprise, Brian giggles. “Don’t know.” He catches Roger’s eyes and suddenly his face goes red.

Roger leans forward in concern. “Is the water bottle to hot?”

Brian coughs and shakes his head. He falls back on his pillows, chest heaving. Roger passes him his tea, and two painkillers. “It’s lovely, thank you. Are you going home soon?”

He shakes his head. “There’s a snow warning on the… your… well _wireless.”_ Brian raises an eyebrow, but Roger cuts him off. “Calling it a _radio_ is an insult to radios everywhere. Where did you get that thing from, Tutankhamen’s tomb? _”_

Brian rolls his eyes, but he looks pleased. “I used hot water bottles this winter. Lots. If it got properly cold I planned on just turning the oven on. You know, if it got _that_ cold.”

“That sounds like an excellent way to die warm. In a nice fireball. Or choking on gas. I’m glad you’re the smart one around here.”

Brian brows draw together, like they do when he wants to argue something, so Roger cuts him off. “You do that, _ever_ , and I’ll not turn up to your funeral. Carbon monoxide poisoning is real.”

In response, his friend rolls his eyes, but sips his tea quietly. Roger stands up to rummage through Brian’s wardrobe. “What are you doing?”

In response, he pulls out a long coat and hangs it over the curtains in the kitchen. He then finds a pair of trousers, a few loose socks, and a woollen jumper. The trousers he hangs up along the front door, right next to the jamb, using the hanger to attach it to the doorframe. The socks he crams under the door, stopping the heat in the apartment from sneaking out. The jumper he pulls over his head to keep warm while he sorts out lunch. The jumper swims on him so he rolls up the sleeves a bit and figures he’ll have to deal with being a shapeless rectangle from shoulders to knees.

“I’ll be here a little while – don’t want to get cold. How do you want your baked beans? On toast or in a bowl?”

Brian’s quiet for long enough that he looks back to check on him. The older man stares back with an unfocused look in his eyes. Like last night, he looked flushed and slow under the drugs. “Uh, toast. Please. Where will you sleep? If the weather stays?”

“Same as this morning, if you don’t mind. I’m not sleeping on the floor in this weather. It’s fine, not like we’re queer or anything.”

“Oh,” says Brian quietly and Roger snorts. 

Nothing much ever happens on Sundays, anyway. He realises quickly the other man is restless from sleeping so long, for not moving around much, and he visibly winces every time he decides to walk around the tiny bedsit. Still, they fill the time easily.

They play scrabble…

“Aquest is not a word!”

…which Roger wins. Brian dictates some of his essay for him to write, much to Brian’s obvious discomfort at having Roger do anything for him…

“You can’t even hold a pen!”

…as Brian’s knuckles are swollen and bandaged from what Roger hopes was a good deal of fighting back. The essay goes in detail about zodiacal stardust… or something.

“Did you write astrologic _again_?”

Barely an hour ambles by before they move to music. They discuss rhythms…

“So when we skip that beat from four-four, or whatever, we could slip in there ba ba cha BOOM.”

“?”

…and key changes. “F minor’s nice.”

“Yeah but can you make it rock n’ roll?”

Brian takes more medication at half three and becomes groggy again, and slightly uninhabited. This amuses Roger right up until it doesn’t.

Roger makes them scrambled eggs and thinks as he sits down to eat, that he’s never had more fun in a small room. He tells Brian this. Brian raises his eyebrows in response, and Roger chuckles wryly.

“Fine, never had more _clothed_ fun in a small room,” he clarifies.

Brian’s picking at his toast, looking exhausted, but he’s determined to make Roger understand how small the sun is. He’s enjoying playing devil’s advocate, and Brian’s getting reeled in faster than normal. In his determination to win, Brian’s face is already creasing and his words are losing their ends. Roger grins beatifically, unable to hold it in any longer. He’s ready to agree and confuse Brian, but then. Brian looks up. He just stops mid-sentence in the same way the rain stops half way through falling. A strange expression falls over his face and Roger feels his smile dripping off his face. Brian’s brown eyes, dark and lazy, fix on his mouth. He notices then how close they are sitting: Brian’s arm is around his shoulders and his legs have melted into Brian’s side. Heat pools in his gut and without quite knowing why he feels himself go red.

Brian leans forward.

Roger leans back, confused, and not liking not knowing what’s going on. He puts a hand on Brian’s chest.

Brian stays there, and what could have only been a few seconds feels like an hour. Roger feels the heat in his gut rising to his head and he feels angry. He pulls away and stands. He turns the radio on loud and begins to make tea.

He’s used to it, he really is, but it hurts coming from Brian. His friend, who knows how much he hates it when he’s mistaken for a girl. Closing his eyes, he can hear wolf whistles when he walks to the shop, the pinch as a knobhead at the pub gooses him, the sound of footsteps behind him as he returns home alone at night.

All he usually resolves in the same way. A masculine “piss off” or a two-fingered salute – anything to let the bloke know he’s got not a chick.

He doesn’t enjoy embarrassing people, but he hates that there exists such bullshit he has to call people out on. His sister, Claire, gets it worse than him, and as he stirs sugar into his tea, he sends a quick prayer to all the women who deal with such bollocks in their lives.

He doesn’t dwell on the few that don’t apologise, that don’t stop being an arse about it. The ones that argue he must be a girl, or worse, suggest…

He feels a hand tighten on its grip on his bum, and an oily voice tells him to take what god’s given him, put on a frock and bend over.

Shaking himself from the memory, he turns to Brian, ready to chew him out for being an arse. He pauses though, because Brian hasn’t moved. He’s still on the floor, staring at the spot where Roger had been sitting. Roger goes over to him, thumps down Brian’s teacup, and stops as Brian grabs his wrist. His grip is gentle, loose enough that Roger can pull away, but still Roger stops for him. He waits for Brian as he breathes in a shaky breath and lets it out in a shaky voice:

“I’m sorry.”

Roger nods, not that Brian can see. He’s got his eyes on the ground like he wishes he could crawl under the carpet.

“Just…” replies Roger. “Don’t do it again, yeah?”

Brian nods, lets go of his wrist, and Roger feels oddly guilty as he does so, and has the sense that he’s gone said the wrong thing. He doesn’t say anything more, just watches as Brian crawls into bed and curls under the covers.

When the phone rings not five minutes later, Roger leaps to answer it.

The voice on the other side is pleasant, if a bit rough. “Hello?”

“Roger speaking,” he begins.

“I, oh. I think I have the wrong number.”

“Uh, who are you—”

Roger stares down at the receiver when he hears the dial tone.

Brian’s voice rumbles behind him. “Who was it?”

Roger shrugs. “Wrong number?”

He turns, and sees Brian curl back under the blankets and sighs.

8pm turns up and with the realisation that although the weather didn’t stay, he did. He noticed it not getting colder or warmer ages ago, hours ago. He looks briefly at the still-shut curtains and back to Brian, who looks bashed and fragile. Roger makes a conscious decision not to open the curtains, to not double check the lack of snow.

So Roger soon pops into bed with Brian, who’s been there most of the time, and tells him about one of his orange duds.

Brian is a good listener, and when he finishes the other man says a quiet, “Thanks for telling me.” The words tickle the hair on his cheek and Roger smiles. He drops his smile quickly.

“Are you sure you don’t know why you were attacked?”

Brian’s quiet for the longest time, long enough for Roger to think him asleep. Eventually he speaks, his voice low. “They were some old… friends. From school.”

Before drifting off to sleep, he feels Brian place a hand on his waist. The hand is cold and shaking slightly, but by degrees relaxes until it loosely grips his side. He hears Brian sigh, and soon the man twitches in sleep behind him.

He sleeps beside a long, shaking body, and keeps guard over his friend.

* * *

Roger has had three orange duds in his life. He’s been an orange dud for others at least eight times, and, to his knowledge, has never experienced being an orange dud couple. The last fact he is grateful for. He saw what it did to mum, after all.

His first dud was an American girl. In his memories, she calls herself Angie and they spend two glorious hours together at Land’s End. They play on the walking trails, perched on cliffs looming high above crashing grey surf. He’s five years old, she’s six, and all he can remember of her now is that she was tall. Sometimes he can almost imagine what she looked like. Curls bouncing around her face like springs. A shy smile. He thinks he remembers the colour of her hair: not grey or black or white, but a fierce orange like a sunset.

He can more clearly remember how he felt. Like he was on a rollercoaster poised at that very peak, ready to fall with a scream.

He remembers how his mother took his hand later, her eyes shining with unwept tears. She had been the one to tell him what orange duds were, how good they could be.

“Daddy and mummy are an orange dud couple, and we love each other very much.”

 He also remembers how daddy would hit mummy, and when he got older, he learned well to take the punches for her.

Later, when he was about eleven and still in prep school, he had found a photograph with his mother and a different man. Both were looking very young, and both were looking very… happy.

He recalls asking, and his mother simply shrugging.

“He gave me colours,” she’d explained, “and then he… took them away.

“He’s dead,” she clarified, when he looked at her in confusion. “He got unlucky in the war. I’m lucky to have found your father.”

 She took the photograph back, placed it inside a bible, and walked away.

Roger’s second orange dud happened in middle school, in his Biology class. He walked in, knowing next to no one, and saw orange. Thankfully, unlike now, the orange faded with the person, and he was able to narrow it down to a bookish, mousy-haired girl. Nell was tall, sharp and frustrating. She seemed to hate him – or rather, hate people.

“Your pencil is orange,” he told her one day.

Smart girl she was, she took his meaning immediately and seemed to freeze.  After an agonising minute, she straightened and smiled. Roger loves thinking about that smile. It was tight, tremulous and rose like floodwater over her face.

They kept it a secret – he was popular, she was not – and last together for three months. He thinks back fondly of this time. She taught him so much about the world: what birds belonged to different songs, what caused snow, and what kissing was like.

She found her soulmate on a Tuesday. For the longest time, the worst thing that happened to him was her telling him, “Rog, you were a _lovely_ distraction.”

His third and final orange dud was a bird he met at a football match. The scarf around her neck flashed orange – she was tall, leggy, slender and had a face straight out of a magazine. Model-like. Classic. Statuesque. He stared at her a bit, and then walked away.

He’d rather wait for the real thing, anyway. At least, that’s what he thought at the time.

He doesn’t think that now.

* * *

Roger wakes up at 6am on Monday morning to Brian’s alarm clock. It’s awful and he’s about to hurl it across the room when Brian stops him. His long, scabbed fingers click it off and soon his hand slides onto Roger’s shoulder.

Brian's healing, his bruises fading and his breathing is coming out light and freely. He moves with little effort closer to Roger.

“Stay?” Brian whispers.

“No need,” Roger answers, and leaves.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was edited on my phone. I apologise for all mistakes still clinging to this published version.
> 
> I'm also pretty groggy/high lol
> 
> I was passenger in a major car accident on Friday and am now holed up in bed with a broken back. No nerve damage - I can still stand, walk, and wiggle my toes. Thank crumple zones and seat belts!
> 
> My laptop did not survive as well as I did. It turns on for long enough for me to retrieve files, but there's... some fragility, let's put it that way. We're still on schedule for updates, providing I have no further high speed, head-on collisions in the near future.

**Spring, 1971**

Shit shit shit.

He’s late to rehearsal.

Clare wants to move out of home. She's an orange dud for a trainee surgeon and Roger spent a good portion of the hour trying to convince her no, not with him. Most surgeons he knows from uni are hollow people, mimics of humans, and she shouldn’t trust anyone based solely on a single colour.

She rang for advice at dawn and it took nearly an hour before she revealed the root of her worries. 

He mentally adds to a list of things he wishes his parents were better at doing. 

"He didn't take you, did he.  Not what makes you smile, or your love of strawberries, or the way you walk, yeah? It's scary but it's also amazing. He took your virginity but you're not going to let him take you, yeah? Got that, love?"

He thinks about his advice as he sprints for the bus, and wishes he had been clearer or more supportive. He wishes he could be _there_. His shoes pinch his wet socks and it is with a heavy heart he watches the bus leave without him. 

A window left open overnight meant he spent the remainder of the morning mopping up London rainwater from the carpet. Fuck it if he was going to let water damage steal Freddie's rental bond. 

So he's a bit out of breath when he makes it to their rehearsal. He walks in, ready to leave the morning behind him and do what he lives for.  

"Forgot my shades," he says by way of explanation. He pushes them down and gives his band a wink.

"Good of you to join us," Brian snipes.

He sees John cringe out of the corner of his eye.

"You didn’t have to wait," he jokes.  "After all, you clearly keep better time than me!"

Freddie chuckles and gives him a G# on the piano to tune his drums with. The chuckle eases some of the tension from the air. "I can’t wait to let out a bit of steam today," Freddie says conspiratorially.

John’s the quickest to catch on. “You had a date with Mary?”

Roger barks out a laugh and turns to John, who turns beetroot red. Another time he’ll needle the clearly virginal John into confessing how he got there before he did. For now, he grins and settles into his seat.

"Mmhmm," confirms Freddie and sighs dramatically. 

"And band practice is the thing to let steam off? Kinky!"

"Best thing next to an orgasm, darling."

"She’ll let you soon, I reckon," he notes, checking his snare sounds as sharp as crystal. 

"We’ll be ready when we’re ready, Roggie."

Roger finds his grin slipping as he watches Freddie settle behind the mic. Behind his cocky words, his face is open and relaxed in a way Roger rarely sees. His smile is almost shy… and he realises Freddie is in love. For the first time in his life, he thinks that orange dud couples aren’t always so bad, if they can be less like his parents, and anything like Freddie and Mary.

Caught in his reverie, he notices last minute his shades slipping down his nose. Freddie’s counting them in, Brian and John are ready, and he swears. The sunglasses clatter to the ground and crunch under his hand as he scrambles to pick them up.

The sound of his glasses breaking is awfully loud and everyone turns to him. Freddie stops, mouth still shaping the tail of a “four”, and Brian’s guitar screeches.

Roger swallows and leaves the ruined shades on the ground. Then Brian’s voice cuts through, snippy and disappointed.

“You and your sunglasses.”

Roger tastes heat for a moment. He’s yelling before he knows it. “You know what I need from sunglasses? They tint colour. To grey. I get to forget for just a moment I didn’t lose my _fucking soul mate_!”

He comes to with his ears ringing and everyone staring at him with _pity._

Swallowing, he cracks his stick over the cymbal and glares at them. “Let’s rock off some steam.”

* * *

“Brian darling, you must tell me – does this go? Roger is adamant it does but I want to check.”

Roger passes John in the hall and wipes his wet hands on his friend's shirt. He looks to Brian, who’s on the couch, barefoot and picking at his guitar. Freddie comes out of the room he shares with John, still looking fabulous in his blue and yellow outfit. Freddie spins for Brian.

“Oi, why you asking him?” Roger scoffs good-naturedly. “The colours go, I told you. And as the only authority in this flat, what I say goes.”

Freddie rolls his eyes. “He can see colours just as well as you can.”

“Freddie,” says John warily, returning from the bathroom.

“You hadn’t noticed? Roger, love.” Freddie checked his fingers, listing off facts without noticing Brian turn white behind him. “Never buys a sour apple at market. Always uses the same scented shampoo. Never mixes his orange socks with a grey.”

“I don’t sniff his fucking hair!” Reality crashes and he feels his blood rush from his body. “You’ve met your soul mate?”

The flat lies quiet for what feels like hours. It doesn’t make sense, nothing makes sense.

“Maybe Brian doesn’t want to talk about it,” suggests John in a quiet voice.

Roger, whose mouth has been opening and closing like an out-of-water fish, whirls on Brian. “When the hell were you going to tell me!”

“It was before we became friends,” Brian sighs, not meeting his eyes. “Look, John’s right: I’d rather not talk about it.”

Freddie nods. “There you go dear; Brian can see colours and is not as lucky as you in the bedding department. And he has lovely taste – how do I look?”

“You look like you shagged a parrot,” Brian snaps. Freddie flinches, surprised. Brian looks down at his guitar and starts tuning it a bit too aggressively. “Are we ready to leave yet?”

“But you wear terrible shirts!” Roger flounders.

There’s a loud twang as Brian turns the knob too far and snaps the E string. Roger finally feels blood return to his body and he sees _red._

“YOU LIED,” he yells. “Fuck you! I thought we were friends!”

Brian yells back just as loud. “WE ARE FRIENDS.”

“I TELL YOU EVERYTHING. AND YOU—“

Roger throws his sticks on the floor and storms out.

* * *

Roger knows everyone’s footsteps in the band. They’ve been living together for over a week now, and he reckons he could be blindfolded and still pick everyone out as they cross their shared rooms. He knows Freddie’s are bright as a car horn by day and light like a dancer by night. John steps unevenly, as if weighing every footfall against the quietude of his heart. Brian on the other hand walks with a steady pace, like he’s not thinking, padding like a cat through familiar territory.

Footsteps falter behind him. Roger takes another drag of his cigarette and leans back against the park bench. He blows out the smoke, feeling calm enough now to talk, if not quite calm enough to turn around.

“What was she like?” he asks Brian, and is surprised to hear that he sounds _sad._

Brian’s voice shakes in reply. “They were. Beautiful.”

“They?” he asks absently.

He feels the bench sag as Brian sits beside him. In his peripheral vision, he can see Brian’s throat working. “ _He_ is beautiful.”

The confession hits him. He takes another drag of his ciggy and tries not to let surprise colour his voice. He chances a look only to see Brian close to crying.

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be. Please.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t deal with sympathy right now. Not from you. Rog…”

“Yeah I get that. No I mean, why did… _he_ reject you? I often wonder why I was. Do you know why?”

“Yeah, I know why. He wasn’t queer.”

Roger takes his last drag and feels the world start to align again. He feels he’s coping with the development well enough, and when he thinks about it, Brian being queer makes a strange sort of sense.

“Arsehole. Fucking universe. That’s not fair.”

Brian laughs. “Yeah. But I’ll never –”

“Never?”

Roger meets Brian’s eyes.

“Never stop loving them.”

He blinks and turns back to study the park, willing his eyes to stay dry.

“Fuck, I didn’t even know mine, and I still love her. I hate it. Hate this. Wish I was as strong as you, Bri.”

“I’m not as strong as you,” Brian argues, stubborn as ever.

“You dealt with a soulmate not wanting you. That’s stronger than what I did.”

“No, you dealt with all this… _shit_ and more,“ Brian says stubbornly, words like a bit between his teeth and he’s pulling the argument back. Roger just looks over at the city and sighs.

“I didn’t do it alone, Brian,” he reminds, and squeezes his mate’s bicep gratefully.

* * *

 He first notices it when he watches Brian’s careful fingering as he plucks out a tune from inside his head. It's something he’s felt before, only now he has a reason for it.

Now he can’t help but think of it. Of… Brian with a man.

He tries to imagine how two men would _work._ At first he feels squeamish, partly embarrassed. He imagines Brian getting rammed like some chick. How would a dick fit in there, anyway? But then he thinks of other things, like blowjobs. Yeah, men have mouths too. So blowjobs would work. And he goes right back into being embarrassed again.

Men have hands, too, he thinks as he grips a drumstick, as he watches Brian’s hand slide over the neck of his guitar.

Men have lips, he realises the next morning, watching Brian eat. Do men kiss other men? He can’t remember having ever seen it. He’s seen a girl kiss another girl during spin the bottle. Would it be similar? Was “cocksuckers” more than just a slur – did it have an element of truth to it? Would they take turns being "the girl"? What would they know? Would men know exactly how to give a good blowjob, on the sheer merit of having a dick themselves? Or do different dicks like different things?

Brian jumps like a groped grandmother when Roger asks him this. He drops his spoon into his bowl, splatters his trousers in porridge, and turns traffic-light red. After a few “Roger!”s and stammering like a waterless kettle, Brian recovers, pulling his face into what Roger mentally categorises as his Studious Ponce mode.

“That’s a lot of questions. I'm not comfortable in answering them. but – yes of course men kiss!”

Despite the fact Brian avoids him for the rest of the day, Roger takes the conversation as a success. He knows men kiss, and that they probably do suck cock for fun, given how embarrassed Brian got.

He talks to John about it, who goes very quiet and can't seem to stop grinning in embarrassment. He offers very little help in assisting Roger's understanding, until he suddenly does.

"He needs to get laid, yeah? Remove that stick from his arse and put a different one up there."

John breaks his silence, and his words are serious, albeit tempered by an errant smile. 

"Brian isn't the sort. He may be... but he isn't the sort to do or commit to anything unless he has a connection. Think of how many bass players you all went through before me."

"What about our postman? He's a bit older, but he's got nice shoulders. Or my bio tutor Joe, he's got legs like Elvis."

John blinks a few times. "Roger..." He blushes. "Roger, I don't know what to tell you.  I have never noticed that sort of thing about a man."

"Never? I mean, a good set of legs are a good set of legs"

"No."

"Oh," he tells John. "Maybe I'm a tad queer, then. Only a bit."

John shrugs. "Only you'd know for sure."

* * *

The week passes until Saturday night arches her back over central London. Him, Brian, Freddie and John are enjoying the post- performance glow, sat in the corner of the pub and nursing their pints. 

Another round appears on their table.

"We didn't order these," says Brian, lawful as always. 

"From the girls over there," says the waitress, waving. 

With John, Roger talks to the girls and drinks, drinks, drinks.  He's swaying in his feet when he stands for the loo and bumps into someone. They're warm, solid, and when he looks up they're well groomed and handsome. Male.

He catches sight of John, thinks for a split second, and decides yeah. why not. 

"Roger," he greets, employing his tried and tested flirty persona. 

The man is quiet, frowning. Roger stumbles suddenly as the man pushes past him none too gently. He goes to follow, but a hand stops him. 

He looks at the hand, notes the slender fingers and knows how clever they can be. 

"Brian!" He looks up to confirm his suspicions and feels his smile drop. It is Brian, but he's frowning. 

"Let's go home," Brian says. He says it near his neck and he shivers. 

Brian walks him outside, to the tube, and into an empty carriage. 

Still Brian whispers. 

"What were you doing? It looked like you were..."

Roger hums and takes Brian's hand. He fiddles with his friend's calluses and neatly cut nails. 

"It looked like you were... flirting with him."

"I was," he confirms. 

He feels his chin being tilted upwards and he looks at Brian's face. Brian's face is a bit confusing and he struggles to read it. So he shrugs and tells him the truth. 

"I just wanted to know what it was like. An element!"

"...An experiment?"

"Yes, that's what I said."

"No..." Brian pulls another face. 

"Hey Bri, why do you look sad?"

"This is our stop," Brian says instead of answering. 

Roger lets it go. He feels steadier when he stands, clearer when he breathes the fresher air of outside, and almost sober when Brian unlocks their door. 

"John?" he calls, getting himself water. "Freddie?"

"We're the first home," says Brian. 

Brian's staring at Roger, but when he meets Roger's eyes he startles and stomps off to their shared bedroom. Roger can hear Brian pace back and forth as he nicks to the loo and can hear Brian sigh as he splashes water on his face. He can't hear Brian when he pulls off the bathroom light, and the flat is left in an eerie quiet.

Roger opens the door, steps inside, and closes it behind him. 

Brian's standing there, standing on his legs that go on for days, and he's looking like a Hellenistic statue. He trembles for never seeing a lovelier person. 

Roger kisses Brian who tastes of beer; for a moment, it’s good. His mouth is bigger than a womans’, his jaw firmer and his skin rough with stubble. Although it's different, it’s a good sort of different. Then Brian’s kissing him back and all thought stops. Brian kisses and kisses him, deep and heavy. It's lovely, it's dark, and it's home.

Feeling confident, he drops his hands to Brian's hips and holds him closer.

He feels a pressure against his chest and realises Brian’s pushing him away. His heart pounds painfully. He keeps his eyes closed, feeling a sudden wet heat behind his lids.

"Rog... I can't be your experiment."

Roger licks his lips and drags in a ragged breath. "Why not?" Far, far too shaky. He breathes in slower, drops his voice to a rasp, and tries to tease him. “Let loose," he says, and tries to smirk. He feels Brian move away, the heat from his body gone, leaving the world cold.

He feels his jaw tense and he turns to one side, so Brian can't see his face. "Just because I'm not your soulmate _–”_

Brian interjects, sounding like he's on the cusp of tears. “I didn’t say that!”

"-- doesnt mean you can't let yourself feel good!”

He feels Brian step back into his personal space, which is good, since the boiling rage within him is drying up his misplaced tears. He opens his eyes to see Brian looking wild: his brown eyes are flashing and he’s using his height to look down at him. The next thing he knows Brian’s yelling at him.

“Is that why you’ve been fucking your way through half of London? To feel good?”

Roger reels backwards. "So what!"

He thumps into the door behind him.

“You’ve tried all the girls, is that it? Run out of people to have meaningless sex with?”

The doorknob catches in his hand but his hand simply slides uselessly around it.

“Ever thought about _them?”_

Brian’s close, face in his, anger distorting it to something sad.

“You find your friend’s a pansy and what, just exactly _what_ does that mean to you? Tell me, god damn it, tell me!”

The door opens and he darts through it, slamming it in Brian’s face. He slides his back against it, keeping it shut. He can feel vibrations run down the length of his spine as Brian thumps his hands against the wood. Eventually that stops too and he feels the thud as Brian mirrors his position, back against the other side of the door.

"I'm sorry," says Brian.

"I'm not," replies Roger. "Fuck you."

He was trying his best, trying to pave his own path. Screw soulmates telling people who they ought to love. He did what he wanted, who he wanted, and nothing in the universe was going to make him do otherwise. He lusted because he wants that person, not because he suddenly sees orange or all the other colours. In the past two years he’s found more about people and discovered everyone’s a little lonely. And not everyone takes the colour mates as gospel. Sex is beautiful and he’s loved and laughed without worry of _what would my soulmate think_ because in the end that's all a construct.

He’s the poster boy for the disenchanted, the rebel of destiny, and the mutineer of love.

And Brian’s right, isn’t he? Bastard. He’s been so desperate for connection that he's whored himself out for it. He may always wear a condom, but he isn’t _clean._ Not on the inside, not in his heart. Who would want to touch him after that? 

Brian speaks. "I’m sorry… for hurting you."

Roger scoffs and rolls his eyes. He feels a hot tear escape down his cheek and he wipes it away angrily.

"You're not a slut," Brian continues.

"Yes I am."

Brian is quiet, like he’s unsure whether he's supposed to refute that fact. Roger hears a sigh. Brian’s voice comes out waveringly. "I may have hang ups about casual sex."

"Yes you do."

"I'm not sorry you kissed me."

_"What?"_

"I like you, Rog. Every person I’ve watched you take home has eaten me up. When it comes to you I'm jealous and stupid. Can’t… I just can't have it be meaningless. I can't imagine what it would be like to have you, then have you never again.

"I used to write to Leonardo da Vinci. I’d put letters in the mail box and mum… would reply as him. She’d use actual stuff he’d said. And he once said something like, ‘when once you have tasted flight, forever will you walk with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.'

"And you, Roger. You have me flying. I can't have that hope, I can't fall like that because it's just… casual. I can't..." and here Brian says " _Fuck,"_ so softly Roger almost didn’t hear it _._

_"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."_

He interrupts Brian’s fuck mantra with a too-loud, “Well…”

Brian stops and is so quiet Roger can’t even hear him breathe. He continues. “What about a date?”

Brians voice sounds wavering. “Date?”

Roger hums. “I think I like you too,” he decides, right then and there. It makes sense, like marmite and cheese makes sense for a sandwich. “So we can take it slow. Why don’t we meet up Saturday night, just you and me?”

At Brian’s continuing silence, Roger grins.

“We’ll go to the Troubadour, eat crap nosh and laugh at the next Bob Dylan. That way, if we don’t like each other’s romantic company, we can at least catch some entertainment. Wear something groovy. 6pm, I’ll pick you up at yours.”

“We live together.”

Roger laughs, enjoying the warmth that crept into Brian’s tone. “Even better. So, yes?

“Yes. God, yes.”

 

They’re awkward that night, once Roger returns to their room. He feels self-conscious for the first time as he strips into his pyjamas, feeling like he was shedding not just his clothes but his skin too. Brian smiles encouragingly, meekly at him, and wishes him goodnight.

He can tell for the longest time that Brian is awake, just like he is. His breaths sigh like unspoken words, loud thoughts, and quiet feelings. Roger listens to him breathe for what seems like hours, allows himself to wonder when Brian started liking him, and tries not to dwell on what there is to like. He thinks of Angie, his first, half-remembered orange dud, and imagines them for the first time as an Angelo, instead of an Angela.

Eventually he blinks awake, not knowing when he fell asleep, and sees it’s late, with the weak yellow London sun stretching through their open window. Brian’s red-covered bed is made and empty, but beside him on the brown floor is a fresh, steaming mug of black tea. He takes it, drinks, and thinks for the first time in years how lovely the world does dance, spinning as she does in a dress of every colour.

He pads out to the living room, smiles at Brian, and laughs when Brian returns the smile, looking rather frazzled. 

"Where's my notebook?"

"Yellow or green?"

"Ah, yellow."

"Under the tea cozy, kitchen."

He snorts as Brian stomps off to the kitchen, rifling through what sounds like the cutlery draw. He hears a happy sigh and knows Brian’s found it.

The doorbell rings and Roger opens it, expecting Freddie to have lost his key. But at the door is a pretty man with ashy hair, cupids-bow lips and doe eyes. Sunglasses glint from where they're clipped to his broad chest. He looks like a footballer, but pretty, and for a moment recognition pings.

“Hi, he says. “Do I know you?”

He looks longer and realises the man is familiar in a fun-house mirror sort of way. Slightly different than him, broader, more masculine, but the similarities are stark, almost familial. Behind him he hears Brian drop his book.

He turns in time to see Brian’s face turn white, eyes round in recognition.

Memories flash before his eyes, until he's left _knowing:_

> "Pretty," confesses a high-on- painkillers Brian. "You look like them."
> 
> "Natalie Wood pretty."
> 
> "You and your fucking sunglasses."

This man is Brian’s soul mate, he realises, and feels his heart drop.

“Franklin?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another mid-chapter perspective change, back to Brian for the end. :))
> 
> Nearly two weeks since the crash, I've progressed to being able to sit, so I do not drop my phone on my face while lying down 24/7. Which means I can work at a computer, yay! I hope you all enjoy the last installment of this angst festival. I love you xx

Brian finds him sitting on a curb near the Albert Memorial, staring blankly at the Royal Albert Hall. There are tourists milling around, and he notices them. He definitely does not notice the way the setting sun highlights Brian’s curls in orange, or the warmth of Brian’s body as he sits beside him.

“I missed my seminar today,” says Brian, and that’s so unlike Brian that Roger shifts his attention from the tourists just to look at him. Brian shrugs and his smile wavers. “You make your lecture?”

“They waited for me,” he replies flippantly. In truth, he remembers very little about what was taught, his notes are blank, and today his feet have moved him to places without thought. He finds he has a cigarette in his hand, unlit. He shoves it back in its carton. He turns to Brian, his knees brushing the taller man’s shins.

Brian shivers a bit, despite it being warm. “You didn’t come home after. We were a bit worried.”

Roger ignores that. “Did he decide he’s queer?”

Brian raises his eyebrows. “How did you know?”

“Arsehole,” he grunts, and hates Franklin. Hates him for breaking Brian’s heart and hates him for wanting it now.

“Yes, he is.”

Roger’s the one who feels surprise now, and he stares at Brian in shock. Brian’s staring back at him with flickering dark eyes. He looks lost.

“I guess that means our date’s off.”

“Is it?”

“You’ll want to be with him, surely.”

Brian laughs. “Why would I want him? He is, as you say, an arsehole.”

“But…”

“He gave me an apology. One a long time coming. He, erm, did ask me out on a date, and I said no.”

“Why?” The man has his goddamn soul mate, and he says _no?_ He feels angry with Brian for throwing away this chance, and just as he’s about to tell him to run after Franklin, Brian cups his jaw.

“Because I have you, Rog. I love you.”

And just like that, he’s been chosen. No expectations, no obligations, no soul mate bullshit. No falling for the idea of a person, but falling for the person himself. Under their own terms.

“I love you too,” he whispers.

Hesitant, moving slowly to not startle, he mirrors Brian’s action. He cups Brian’s jaw and it's electric. The stubble under his hands is rough, the friction a bite to tell him he’s really there, really doing this.

They meet half way. Brian presses a kiss into his lips, dry and warm. His heart flips, pounding loud enough that he's shaking when he kisses into Brian’s mouth. Oh god, he's so warm, sweet and gentle. He remembers too late they’re in public, that there are people with cameras and Brian wouldn’t like that, probably. Brian’s hand moves from his jaw to caress his neck and all thoughts stop.

In the end, he has no idea who breaks the kiss. They were, and now they’re breathing the air between them.

He opens his eyes to find the world has burst. He wonders for a moment because he’s never quite noticed the brown of Brian’s eyes. They’re brown brown, more so than autumn leaves or soft soil hiding beneath them wonders of life. There’s red and yellow and vermillion and periwinkle. There are shades between yellow and green, between green and blue. Colours in Brian’s eyes so new and frightening that black stops and falls. They're not colours, they're emotions, feelings swirling straight from his heart and into the world.

The vibrancy fades when he pulls back in confusion; with his hand falling from Brian’s face the world fades to normal. He looks at Brian’s expression and he knows Brian can see it too, but he doesn’t seem shocked. The man doesn’t follow Roger or retreat. He just stays still.

Roger pushes him away. He stumbles to his feet, hands to his lips and his head spinning. He steadies himself on a lamppost and sees Brian’s turned white as chalk.

The past three years flash before his eyes, each memory becoming more damning than the last.

“It’s you.” Roger says, wrecked. “It’s always been you.”

Brian swallows audibly and Roger feels emotion claw up from his chest. Brian looks around as he stands up – Roger can see in his peripheral vision that people have stopped to stare at them, awkward and curious. Demanding his attention, he shoves Brian hard enough that he wheels backwards.

“Say it!” he screeches.

“We’re… we’re...” Brian doesn’t seem able to finish the sentence. Somehow that’s even worse.

The sound he makes is wretched.

“You rejected me Bri.”

“You rejected me! You weren’t queer—”

“Fuck! Off!” Roger screams, feeling frustration in every line of his body. “No, Brian Harold Fucking May. You had a choice. I should’ve had one too.”

He storms off, leaving Brian seconds to stare at his retreating form before he disappears into the crowds. He hears a camera click, winces, and wanders off in the opposite direction, into the Kensington Gardens. He’s alone, just as he hoped he’d never be again.

 

* * *

 

The lamps glow orange and taxis prowl the streets by the time Brian slinks up to their flat. He finds it dark and empty. When he flicks on the light, he notes some of John and Freddie’s gear are missing, and reckons they’re out. His suspicions are confirmed when he sees a note on the kitchen worktop.

“We’re meeting Rog at The Stanhope,” reads John’s friendly handwriting.

He screws the note up and shoves it in the bin. He showers, washes his hair, and lets out a scream. Once he starts making noise, he can’t seem to stop.

“You want to be _queer?_ You want to know about my orange duds?” he rants to his mirror. “How about Franklin who loved queers so much he sent me to hospital at 17? Fuck! Fuck!”

He quietens and sits on the edge of the bath. He’s cold and so pulls the towel around his shoulders. He stands, dresses, and dries his face because it somehow has become wet _again_ (stupid hair, he grouses, and dries it as best he can). He looks between their bedrooms, Freddie and Deaky’s, and his and Rog’s, and feels that scream claw up again, threatening to break free.

He’s going to break up the band _again_. He slumps on his bed and can hear it, hear Tim’s words of warning, weeks before he left. The memory grows and expands from those words, playing in a loop in his head, until it all unfolds in front of him.

The air, thick with cigarette smoke and perfume. Roger leaving with a girl, such a lovely girl, and Tim turns to him.

“Roger’s popular, isn’t he?”

He hums. Sadly. Why did he do that? Why did he do anything?

“I guess he’s appealing to a lot of folk,” says Tim.

Brian stares at Tim. Tim sighs.

“Brian. Do you fancy Rog?”

He starts to deny it but finds he can’t. He nods.

Tim seems to want to say something, so Brian waits.

“Are you his soul mate?”                                                 

Brian nods again. Why? Why did he do that? He should have lied to his friend, as he lies to everyone else. The alcohol heightens everything and to his horror, he feels tears well in his eyes.

“I knew it,” Tim breathes. He levels a glare at Brian. “Sort it the fuck out.”

He finishes his pint and walks out.

And then it isn’t Tim’s voice, it’s Fred’s voice swearing at him, it’s John’s voice being cold. It’s them walking out, it’s Roger as he walks away.

The phone rings.

He jumps up, heart hammering, only to find his feet won’t move. It rings and rings and he’s a poleaxed poodle in a shirt, that’s all he is. A stupid, fluffy-haired procrastinator. The phone stops ringing and - oh _now_ he can move. He reaches for the cool Bakelite and near jumps out of his skin when it rings again.

“Hello?” he asks, hearing ambient laughter and voices on the other end.

“I’ve been told to say Freddie wants to meet you at The Kensington,” begins John.

“I tried so many times to tell him, John—”

But the other end cuts off, leaving him with the dial tone. He stares at it blankly. How much had Roger told them? At least Freddie seemed to want to listen to his side, even if John did not. He's done it, he's broken everything.

He makes it to the Kensington but sees no Freddie, no John, and no Roger. There are very few of anyone, it being past teatime on a Sunday. Swallowing, he finds himself at an empty table and waits.

He watches a young couple come in, order a couple of drinks, and sit down. He watches an old man hobble in from outside, and later, a businessman. What a deserving joke it would be if no one showed up. But then the door opens and someone he recognises lights up the doorway.

Instead of Freddie, Roger strides through the pub. Shocked, he watches as Roger talks to the barkeep, presumably to order a pint. The barkeep shakes Roger’s hand and Roger sits down at a table on the other side of the room. Shocked, Brian frowns. Should he go over? Did Roger see him? Did he want to talk?

 _Ting ting. Ting ting,_ the Colour Bell rings out.

_Oh._

Brian approaches the bar.

“Lager again?”

He shakes his head. “Is it for that person over there? The Colour Bell.”

The barman looks surprised. Eyebrows raised, the man looks over at Roger, probably to check if the blond has grown tits since he last looked. He hasn’t, of course. “Er, yes.”

“Good,” says Brian.

He makes his way over to a man who has put stars into his heart. Roger looks up and meets his eyes.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Brian May. I play guitar and I like astronomy, and I’m your soul mate.”

"Yes," rasps Roger. "God, yes."

They don’t kiss, not here, not yet. But they do hold hands under the table, shaking, terrified, and relieved.


End file.
